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Homans emphasizes the importance of organizing facts and observations into a systematic framework for effective theorizing, which aids in description, prediction, and explanation. While natural sciences often achieve high-level theoretical systems, social sciences face challenges that lead to the use of verbal models instead of mathematical structures. Nonetheless, theories in social sciences must still fulfill basic criteria for organization and prediction of relationships among events.

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Notes

Homans emphasizes the importance of organizing facts and observations into a systematic framework for effective theorizing, which aids in description, prediction, and explanation. While natural sciences often achieve high-level theoretical systems, social sciences face challenges that lead to the use of verbal models instead of mathematical structures. Nonetheless, theories in social sciences must still fulfill basic criteria for organization and prediction of relationships among events.

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Homans has expressed this function i n the following picturesque

way:
Even the most fragile theory has its uses. In its lowest form, a s a
classification, it provides a set o f pigeonholes, a filing cabinet, i n which
fact can accumulate... . In time the accumulation makes necessary a
more cconomical filing system, with more cross references, and a new
theory is born."
The ordering of facts and observations into some scheme is
fundamental to description o f any field about which theorizing is to
be done. It i s a way of arranging information so that the scope and
the internal relationships o f the total body o f information is more
visible. A s Brodbeck stated: "A theory not only explains and
predicts, i t also unifies phenomena."*"
At a higher level, those functions are added that permit
moving beyond classification or collection of facts t o action of
broader scope such as that involved i n induction and prediction.
Whereas it is true that the ordering o f information i n a systematic
manner is a task o f theorizing, the task really is but a prelude to the
fulfillment of the larger functions of theory. With these being
description, prediction, and explanation, theory building reaches
its most systematic level when the resulting theory becomes a
full-blown logico-deductive system, or a logico-mathematical
system. These high-level goals are reached most easily in the
natural sciences, but i n the social sciences the complications of the
sets of events t o be explained by theories may force theorists to
temporarily lesser levels of achievement. Very few theoretical
systems utilizing symbols and mathematical structures have been
created i n the social sciences. Instead, verbal models are used
extensively as ways of representing particular phenomena
Nevertheless, theories in the social sciences must meet the basic
criteria for theorizing and these include the organization of
relationships so that they are better explained and so that
predictions can be made for events not yet observed from known
relationships.
We return for a moment to Kerlinger's definition which
illustrates the three theory functions of description, prediction,
and explanation. First, the definition calls for description through
*George Homans, The Human Group (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1930), p . 5.

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